“But, you may say, we asked you to write about women and fiction—what has that got to do with a room of one’s own?” So begins Virginia Woolf’s timeless and classical essay A Room of One’s Own (1929). Woolf’s question has persisted at the back of my mind while compiling this issue on women writers conditions and experiences all around the world. In her essay Woolf uses the room as a metaphor, but also as a practical pre-condition for womens writing and shows why, throughout history, it has been so hard for women to find the right conditions in which to write and to subsequently reach success as writers. To be able to write freely there is a need of a physical room but also of a mental room. Woolf throws light on the fact that even in those cases where the physical conditions are conducive to writing, there may be inherent societal structures that make it almost impossible for a woman writer to be treated according to the same measures as a male writer.
Much has happened concerning the rights of women since the publication of A Room of One’s Own, but the question in Woolf’s essay is still alarmingly current. Even today there are novels, poetry, essays, articles and reportage that do not see the light of day since women are not allowed to write—or do not dare to write. Even if a woman’s status in society in many places has risen radically since the writing of A Room of One’s Own, many women in many parts of the world are still being silenced and censured mainly due to their sex—so-called gender-based censorship. In some places women may also be imprisoned or killed for their writings. In totalitarian states where women are seen as second-grade citizens and lack the same rights as men, a woman who writes and reads becomes a major threat—because words are an active deed and action makes a difference. On the Internet there is a meme in circulation that “women who read are dangerous”. We can laugh at it in Sweden, but in certain countries it is a reality—a woman who both reads and writes is a major threat to the status quo in society.
